As Breaking Bad nears its fraught end, a look back at some memorable bow-outs, for better or worse. By Tom Junod, Scott Raab, Tom Chiarella, Stephen Marche, and Matthew Kitchen

Seinfeld

Seinfeld

Few finales have let down their audience quite like Seinfeld did in 1998. There were no real surprises or shocking elements, no dreams or snowglobes. It was just a reunion show that ended with four of TV's most beloved characters — Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine — going to jail for being assholes in a small Massachusetts town. Wah wah.

But I dare you to rewatch the run of the show and not believe it's the perfect ending to TV's undefeated champion of sitcom. Because, for all the lies and manipulations and schemes, for the hurt feelings, the people fired, the lives and businesses ruined, the stolen breads, deported foreigners, and Bubble Boys popped, the cavalier attitude toward sex and relationships, and for the lack of remorse for everything up to and including the accidental death of George's fiancee, Susan, the ending to Seinfeld was the ultimate comeuppance for the acts of four truly awful human beings.

"I do not know how, or under what circumstances the four of you found each other," the judge remarks, "but your callous indifference and utter disregard for everything that is good and decent has rocked the very foundation upon which our society is built. I can think of nothing more fitting than for the four of you to spend a year removed from society, so that you can contemplate the manner in which you have conducted yourselves. I know I will."

Fans of the show didn't like the finale because they had just spent nine seasons laughing at the misfortunes of others while spouting catchphrases and comparing themselves to the different characters. Now they realized the characters they loved so much were actually just assholes, and that probably meant they were, too. —Matthew Kitchen

The Larry Sanders Show

The Larry Sanders Show

You'll never see a series finale done as perfectly as "Flip," the last episode of The Larry Sanders Show, which ended its six-season run on HBO in 1998 and still stands alone at the summit of television satire. The concept was simple — lay bare the bones of a late-night talk show and its hyper-neurotic host — and the execution was, season after season and without exception, brilliant beyond telling. Garry Shandling, Sanders co-creator and star, co-starred with Rip Torn and Jeffrey Tambor (playing, respectively, Larry's swinging dick of a producer and his lickspittle sidekick), and featured a cast that at various times included Jeremy Piven, Sarah Silverman, Janeane Garofalo, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Bob Odenkirk. David Letterman, Warren Zevon, Ben Stiller, Jon Stewart, Laura Dern, Alec Baldwin, Adam Sandler, Dave Chappelle, Paul Westerberg, Don Rickles: All of them, and countless others, showed up as guests over the years, playing mainly nasty versions of themselves.

I never loved a TV show more, or was so sorry to see one end. But "Flip" — it was like dying at the peak of orgasm, with a pastrami Reuben in one paw and a fatty in the other. The double-length episode opens with Larry watching a tape of Jack Paar's actual goodbye to his own talk-show viewers in 1965 — no show ever warped the metaphysics of televised reality the way Sanders often did, and no episode did so more than this one, particularly when Sean Penn, appearing as a guest, leans over to Sanders during a commercial break and vents his loathing for his real-life Hurlyburly co-star, Garry Shandling.

"Flip" also features near-brawls in the green room between Tom Petty and Clint Black, and Petty and Greg Kinnear (Petty winds up leaving the studio before his guest spot), a Jerry Seinfeld walk-on, a Warren Beatty cameo, and a scene with Greg Kinnear and the late, great Bruno Kirby that should blaze for all eternity in every actor's heart. The show ends as Shandling, Torn, and Tambor walk out of the darkened studio together. "I hope we beat Leno," Larry Sanders says, just before the final credits roll. A fitting epitaph. —Scott Raab